Even before Census Night on August 9, the hashtag “#censusfail” was already trending in Australia, where activists calling for privacy, anonymity, and security were leading an effort to boycott this year's national census, or at least refuse to provide the government with names.

At 7:45 p.m. local Eastern Time on Census Night, the Australian Bureau of Statistics shut down the census website following four Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Within minutes, #censusfail was one of Twitter's globally trending hashtags. Olympics references were inevitable:

Background

Prior to Census Day, the online news site the New Daily had explained people's concerns:

The Census will keep the data collected from Australian citizens, including their names and addresses, for four years, up from a previous 18 months in a move the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says will improve its research.

The longer retention times have been a source of protest, as fears relating to data privacy and security grow.

David Glance, the director of the Centre for Software Practice at University of Western Australia, shared his misgivings at The Conversation:

Glance also examined the risks posed to people's anonymity by the government storing citizens’ names for four years:

With names and addresses, the Census data can be linked to other data sets where we have already allowed our name and address to be used. This includes health, education and other data.

Anna Johnston, the director of Salinger Privacy and a former deputy privacy commissioner, explained why she intended to join the boycott:

[…] the deliberate privacy invasion starts with the use of that data to create a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) for each individual, to use in linking data from other sources. Please don’t believe that SLKs offer anonymity. […]

So until the ABS reverses its decision to match Census data about individuals with other datasets about individuals, I am not going to answer the Census questions at all.

Anna has been joined by several federal senators who say they would risk fines by refusing to put their names on the form.

Justin Warren at the website EigenMagic pointed out the potential benefits of linking more information, while highlighting certain problems:

I think the ABS… has become arrogant. They are convinced of the benefits of retention, and are dismissive of the risks.

…I remain unconvinced that the benefits of retaining name and address data outweigh the risks.

Matthew Rimmer, a professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law, looked at the broader issue of privacy laws:

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